Take That

One-hundred years ago, The Infinity Engine was shattered and its reality-bending shards have destroyed most of the world. Now, it falls upon you to gather your forces, defeat your adversaries, and rebuild the Infinity Engine! Will you survive?

Shards of Infinity combines an unprecedented level of strategy and customization into one small box. Rather than competing for points, players must outlast their opponents and reduce their health to zero, which can be done in a number of ways. Each player starts the game with a basic deck of cards, and they can acquire new cards from a central display of six cards (as in Ascension) and add these new cards to their deck or use them immediately, depending on what they are.

Every character starts with fifty health and zero mastery. On each turn, you can spend one gem (a.k.a., money) to gain a mastery point. The more mastery you have, the more powerful your cards become. This lets even the weak cards in your starting deck become more powerful as the game progresses. If you reach a total of thirty mastery, you can activate your Infinity Shard, which instantly defeats your opponent.

As you acquire new cards, you can employ allies and champions to craft your strategy. Mercenary cards can be added to your deck as in other deck-building games or they can be played immediately from the center row for their ability; this adds even more drama to each player's turn as a key mercenary flip can alter the very outcome of the game!

Will you neutralize your opponents before they can fully master the Infinity Shard? With careful planning and aggressive gameplay, only one player can emerge the winner!

The "shufflebuilding" game Smash Up begins with a simple premise: take the 20-card decks of two factions, shuffle them into a deck of forty cards, then compete to crush more bases than your opponents! Each faction involves a different gaming mechanism, and each combination of factions brings a different gaming experience.

In Smash Up: Marvel, players smash up two groups of Marvel characters, such as the vigilant members of The Ultimates or the criminal masterminds HYDRA, to take over bases and score the most victory points. Mix and match the different decks of heroes and villains to see which combinations can best defeat the others! This game allows for fans to create stories that have never existed in the Marvel universe. What combo will you choose?

Welcome to the party! Please, have a drink. There’s only a slight chance that one of the other guests have poisoned it! Will you take the risk?

Poisons is a bluff-based card game in which players have to carefully weight their risks to earn points. Each turn, players secretly add a card from their hand to each opponent's drink: an innocuous liquid or a deadly poison. When everyone has their cup filled, each player decides whether they will drink the contents of their cup.

Those who don't dare to sip the mixture gain only a minimal amount of points. Those who drink their cup score the number of points revealed at the beginning of their turn, but beware if there's a single dose of poison in the glass, they get nothing!

After four rounds of libations, the player with the most points win. Advanced rules add new kinds of drinks with special effects, for an even deeper mind game between the players.

—description from the publisher

Here to Slay is a competitive role-playing fantasy strategy card game that's all about assembling a party of Heroes and slaying monsters (and sometimes sabotaging your friends too) from the creators of Unstable Unicorns.

In this game, you’ll assemble a full party of heroes to slay dangerous monsters while working to avoid the sabotage of your foes. The game also includes items you can equip to your heroes, 1V1 challenge cards, and roll modifiers to tip the odds in your favor.

» HOW TO PLAY «

The first person to successfully slay three monsters, or build a full party with six classes, wins the game!

» PARTY LEADERS «

Every player gets to choose a party leader character to represent them throughout the game. Each party leader card has a class and a skill that gives you an edge over your opponents. Whether you enjoy fighters, bards, wizards, or thieves, you'll find a party leader that's right for your play style - but choose wisely, because you only get one party leader for the whole game!

» HEROES «

Your heroes are brave adventurers, ready to attack monsters and go head to head with your foes! The game includes over 40 unique heroes. Each hero card has a class and an effect, and each hero’s effect has a roll requirement. In order to use a hero’s effect, you must roll two dice and score equal to or higher than that effect’s roll requirement.

» MONSTERS «

Everyone wants to be a hero, but are you brave enough to face off against these monsters? If you successfully slay three monsters, you win the game, but attacking a monster may come at a price! In order to slay that monster, you must roll two dice and score equal to or higher than that monster’s roll requirement. 
Be warned: Each monster has a roll range in which they’ll fight back, and if you score within that range, your party might be in grave danger…

» ITEMS «

Item cards are enchanted weapons and objects that can be equipped to your heroes to bestow them with special advantages and skills. Most items give beneficial effects and are meant to be equipped to heroes in your own party, but a handful of items, called cursed items, can be equipped to enemy heroes to give them disadvantages. 

» MAGIC «

What would this world be without a little magic and mayhem? Magic cards are powerful spells with a one-time effect. Some magic cards can give you great advantages, while others are designed to set your opponents back.

» CHALLENGES «

Don't like what your opponent just played? Throw down a challenge! Challenge cards can be played instantly to try to stop another player from playing a hero, item, or magic card. Playing a challenge card initiates a 1V1 challenge in which you and another player both have to roll the dice. If they win the challenge, they still get to play their card, but if you win the challenge, you get to send their card directly to the discard pile!

» MODIFIERS «

Only fools rely solely on luck. In this game, you can keep a modifier card up your sleeve (or, well, in your hand) to make sure the odds always tip in your favor. Modifier cards add or subtract from the final total of any dice roll. Whether you need to recover from a low roll or sabotage the high roll of an opponent, modifier cards can be a handy tool when luck doesn't seem to be on your side.— description from the publisher

King Nebuchadnezzar II has spoken: "Build me the most wondrous gardens the world has ever seen!" The gardening guilds of Babylon have answered, and it is now up to the players, as leaders of these guilds, to build one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and lead their guild to victory in the cutthroat world of competitive gardening.

Gardens of Babylon is a 1-4 player, competitive euro-style game in which players strive to earn the most points by planting flower seeds on the most valuable tiles. Taking turns, players place tiles to create a maze-like ziggurat of pathways, strategically move their gardeners to gain positional advantage, and plant seeds to claim tiles, earning victory points and triggering cascades down connected waterways to steal those of their opponents in the process!

Featuring simple rules and strategic thinking, Gardens of Babylon offers infinite replayability with 78 distinct ziggurat tiles that form a unique 2.5-dimension modular board. A novel cascade mechanism allows a well-placed seed to change the course of the game in an instant, offering emergent gameplay and keeping players on their toes until the very end.

—description from the publisher